Published in the Capitol Guards Sentinel, September, 1998

BY THE END OF THE FIRST WEEK IN July, 1846, the last of the ten companies that would form the Arkansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment had reported for duty at Old Washington, and while the enlisted men bivouacked and swapped stories about the romantic proclivities of Mexican women, the company officers assembled for the election of the regimental officers. Notable by his absence from the balloting was the most popular man in the regiment, former governor Archibald Yell, who had resigned his seat in Congress to come home and enlist in Solon Borland's company as a private. Since he was an enlisted man he was not eligible to vote in the regimental election, but from the very beginning it was almost a foregone conclusion that, as a leading Democrat and a distinguished public servant, he would be elected colonel.

Captain Albert Pike, commanding the Little Rock Guards of Company E, was nominated against Yell, only to lose on the first ballot, but he was not too disappointed. Very well, he thought, let Yell be colonel. At least Yell had had a taste of military experience in the War of 1812. With Yell as colonel, Pike was sure that he would be elected lieutenant colonel. Again he was disappointed. John Selden Roane, the square-faced captain of the "Van Buren Avengers" and a firm Democrat, without a whit of military experience in his twenty-nine years, was elected as to the post. And when Solon Borland, another staunch Democrat, was elected as the major, Pike turned away in disgust, and a bitter resentment began to rise in him that would last as long as the unfortunate Mexican adventure.

ON JULY 18, 1846, THE ARKANSAS regiment marched south, flags waving, morale high, toward Shreveport and thence across Texas to San Antonio. Plagued by rain, the march was slowed down and the 793 Arkansas volunteers did not join General John E. Wool's army in San Antonio until August 28th. It was here that the Arkansawyers began to realize that a man can be an excellent Democrat without necessarily being a good soldier.

General Wool, occupied with more important matters and anxious to whip his expeditionary force in shape for a march into Mexico, did not take time to inspect the Arkansas troops when they first arrived, and assigned them a campground on the river four miles from town. Colonel Yell quickly laid out a camp but neglected to provide for or enforce any of the field sanitation measures which should have been taken on setting up a bivouac. No one reminded him. The weather was miserably hot, and the men much preferred basking in the shade of the trees along the river and taking baths in the slightly tepid water to the onerous duty of digging latrines.

While the other men were doing nothing, Captain Pike had the Little Rock Guards out in the sun, putting them through close-order drill, a discipline he refused to abandon even when the other officers permitted their men to lie about.

Lacking established latrines, the Arkansas camp took on a certain unmistakable pungency after four days, and when General Wool, a strict disciplinarian, first saw the camp (and smelled it), he was so offended that he immediately ordered the Arkansas volunteers to move to higher ground.
Yell promptly complied with the order, but instead of making provisions for a more comfortable camp by taking his men upriver, he led them out to a ridge a couple of miles from the original campsite where there was neither shade nor water. It was a scorching hot day in mid-August, and the men responded to the change by dropping like flies. Hundreds of them went on the sick list and so depopulated the regiment that the Little Rock Guards had only sixteen able men left in their company.

The responsibility for moving the men to the treeless ridge was subject for much discussion in the Arkansas camp, and the majority the enlisted men had a tendency to blame General Wool since they hated him anyway, considering him "aristocratic." Pike, still fuming from his losses in the regimental election, turned his bitterness to an indictment of Archibald Yell. Once, he had written that Yell was a "good, unaffected fellow," but now he described him as "totally incompetent and unable to learn" and "a laughing stock" in a letter he sent back home to Arkansas.

While the army of General Wool was encamped at San Antonio, luring the hot sun and eager to get into action, General Zachary Taylor's army was moving steadily south, fighting his chief battle against inefficiency rather than against the Mexicans. So far, he had led his army deeper into Mexico, sending orders to General Wool to bring his army south to unite with the main force.

BY THIS TIME, the Arkansas volunteers had been away from home for about four months, and there is nothing more damaging to the morale of an army than purposeless waiting. The Little Rock Guards, disciplined by their incessant drilling, was able to withstand the long, empty days better than the rest of the Arkansas volunteers. They fretted at the regulations imposed on them by the arbitrary General Wool, and, as a result, a number of untoward incidents took place.

"Those mounted devils," as Wool described the boys from Arkansas, made life very unpleasant for him. One day, for instance, an Arkansas trooper, curious to see how the general lived, poked his head into the general's tent The general was outraged. He told the soldier to leave immediately; when that failed, Wool commanded his orderly to force him out at gunpoint. At that, the Arkansawyer suddenly leveled his musket at the general, and said, "Old horse, damn your soul, if you give such orders I will shoot you for certain." The general was forced to back down, and the soldier took his time about leaving.

On another occasion an Arkansas volunteer was informed by Wool's orderly that the general thought the Arkansas camp was making too much noise and that they should quieten down. "Tell Johnny Wool to kiss our asses," the soldier snapped.

On another day, one of the Little Rock Guards kept the general standing in the rain when Wool forgot the password and the volunteer refused to let him into camp without it.

Perhaps some of these stories represent the sort of tales that collect after every war, but they reflect quite accurately the general attitude of bored men who had been led to believe that the war was over, only to find themselves ordered to march deeper into Mexico.

The Arkansas Volunteer Cavalry regiment, (also known as theRackensackers, Mounted Gunmen, and "Yell's Mounted Devils" had two distinct periods of clothing. On the journey from Arkansas to San Antonio, the regiment had not been issued much of anything in the way of supplies from the war department. That included equipment, clothing, and weapons. The volunteer in this period would generally wear their civilian clothing and have with them the arms and equipment a civilian of that time would normally travel with. After they reached San Antonio, they received army supplies but no uniforms. They didn't receive real uniforms until they were in Mexico and had been in the service for half a year. They were actually issued standard dragoon uniforms, complete with "D" buttons and yellow stripes down the leg. The army supplies included better tents, cooking kettles, 457 carbines and accoutrements, 457 pistols and holsters, 457 sabers and belts, and 458 rifles and accoutrements with forty cartridges and two flints per gun. Half of the regiment were outfitted as mounted rifleman, and the other half as traditional cavalry. The Guards were in the group outfitted as cavalry, and Pike complained "Half the men have snaffle bits, with which a horse cannot be managed in the ranks, and saddles totally unfit for packing their baggage. The pistols given us are old, the sabres soft, and the caps for the carbines only one in two or three will explode."

Because of the sickness that had reduced the strength of the companies, the Little Rock Guards were consolidated with another Arkansas company led by John Preston. Since Pike was the senior captain, he was placed in command of the enlarged group and ordered to escort the army engineers a hundred miles west to Santa Rosa, to lay out the route and campsites for the main army, which would follow shortly. The Little Rock Guards rode into Santa Rosa with sabers drawn, expecting to encounter bitter fighting at any moment, only to find a mud village as dreary and as passive as Presidio. They camped there a week until the main army could catch up with them.

After a brief camp at Santa Rosa, Wool moved his army to Monclova. The soldiers felt certain they would run into Mexicans on the Monclova road, and they looked forward to a rousing fight. "We had about three thousand troops," one of Pike's men wrote, " and felt able to whip any troops that could be brought in this part of the country." Again there was no opposition. The army rested for a month near Monclova and then new orders came from General Taylor for Wool to move his force to Parras, 120 miles west of Saltillo.

In the next few weeks, the soldiers might very well believe there was no Mexican army at all and that the whole war was a great fictional conspiracy designed to keep them marching from place to place. They arrived at Parras without finding a trace of the enemy, and then, on December 17th, they marched again as Wool received orders to move to Saltillo to reinforce General William J. Worth in the face of an imminent attack. As Wool moved out of Parras, he sent Pike and his men on a forced march to the village of Agna Nueva, twenty miles south of Saltillo on the San Luis Potosi road, on an intelligence mission. It was rumored that the Mexican army was grouping south of San Luis Potosi and that they would have to follow this road to attack the American armies camped at Saltillo.

Pike learned nothing at all at Agua Nueva, and when he reported to Wool at Saltillo he could only repeat the rumors he had heard. According to these rumors, the Mexican forces were gathering below San Luis Potosi under the personal command of the wily General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the same general who had massacred Texans at the Alamo and had been defeated at San Jacinto by Houston, only to slip away from exile in Cuba to mass the armies of Mexico against his lifelong enemies, the Americans. After he had reported to Wool, Pike was sent to an outpost in a narrow Las Palomas, a few miles outside Saltillo, where his men relieved a Kentucky cavalry regiment guarding this point.

In the opening days of 1847, all the Americans, from the generals to the enlisted men, grew extremely edgy as day after day by with rumors of an impending battle, and still no sign of the enemy. The strain was too much for some of the Arkansas boys under Colonel Yell who broke away from camp one night and rode into the village of Cantana where they slaughtered several civilians suspected of murdering one of their fellow soldiers. The avenging troopers could not be identified, and General Taylor, taking time out from his preparations for an engagement with the Mexican army, stormed over the murder of the innocents and threatened to discharge the two companies of Arkansas volunteers involved in the episode. Only the fact that he would need every man he could muster to fight Santa Anna made him reconsider. The investigation proved fruitless, and the matter was dropped.

The rumors had caused a different kind of trouble for Major Solon Borland and his men. He had taken a scouting party south of Agua Nueva on the San Luis Potosi road to see if he could find the enemy. Finding no trace of the Mexican army, he had discounted the rumors and made a night camp without flanking his position with pickets. The next morning he awoke to discover that during the night the Mexican army had advanced around him. He was surrounded, with no opportunity for a fight. With thirty-four of his men, Major Borland was taken prisoner.

To minimize the unnerving effects of this waiting period, Pike kept the Guards at Las Palomas busy with a full round of military activities from inspection at reveille to a dress parade at sunset, and when the battle finally started, his men were ready for it.

Although the rumors of Santa Anna's advance circulated constantly during late January and early February, it was February 20th before the Mexican general made his move toward Saltillo. His massed armies moved very slowly up the San Luis Potosi road, preceded by American scouts who galloped back to Agua Nueva, where Taylor had established his headquarters, to inform him of the advance. Taylor had approximately 4,700 men, and from his scouts he learned that Santa Anna's force outnumbered him three to one. (Later, a number of soldiers who fought against the Mexican army estimated it at 21,000 men.) Taylor did nothing when he received these first reports, deciding to wait to see what Santa Anna was going to do. He almost delayed too long, for the next day (February 21st), more scouts rode into Agua Nueva with the news that 2,000 Mexican cavalrymen under General Mifion were riding through the mountains to the east, by-passing Taylor for an attack on his supply base at Saltillo. Taylor knew he could not hold Agua Nueva, for it was in an exposed position, and now, faced with a hasty strategic retreat up the road into the mountains near Saltillo, he could carry only part of his supplies with him. He ordered the rearguard to burn the rest.

The billows of smoke from these expensive bonfires climbed into the sky behind him as he raced to the north, looking for a place to make a stand. He brought his army to a halt at the hacienda of Buena Vista, a cluster of Mexican ranch buildings on high ground. It afforded (or so he thought at the time) a perfect defensive position, for to the south was a serrated plain flanked by the precipitous walls of two mountain ranges. The plain was one to five miles wide, and the rains from the high slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental to the east had poured down into it over the centuries to make it look like a giant washboard in which the parallel ridges were separated by deep gullies with perpendicular earthen walls forty feet high. These watercourses ran from east to west and emptied into a river at the extreme western edge of the plain. The river ran the length of the valley in a flat bedded canyon where the San Luis Potosi road ran parallel to the river between the west bank and the canyon wall. It was on this road that Santa Anna would have to come. Taylor could see no other possible route.

Confidently, Taylor gathered the whole of the American army at Buena Vista, covering the canyon road with his artillery, leaving a garrison to protect the supply base at Saltillo, and sending a detachment of cavalry and four companies of infantry to his extreme left, all the way to the base of the distant mountains. Now he was ready. Let Santa Anna march his army up the road; they would never survive the pounding from the American artillery.

On February 21st Pike was ordered back to Saltillo to strengthen the garrison against the Mexican cavalry, if indeed the Mexicans ever managed to get through the mountains to attack the supply base. A day later, the Little Rock Guards were ordered south to join the main force at Buena Vista, but, for some reason, they had ridden only part of the seven-mile journey before they were ordered back again. They returned to Saltillo, tied up their horses, and took positions on the rooftops around the central plaza where they would have a better view of the surrounding country.

The force that General Taylor had deployed to the extreme eastern edge of the plain at Buena Vista consisted of the Arkansas volunteers under Colonel Yell and the Second Indiana Regiment. It was unlikely they would have to do any fighting at all, because they were intended as a deterrent in case General Mifion decided to cut through the mountains and attack the main American army on the flank instead of going on to Saltillo.

On February 22nd, as General Taylor waited for the Mexican armies to appear in the canyon, he suddenly realized that he had made a mistake, an error that became unmistakably clear when an excited scout rode in to report. Taylor had supposed the Mexicans would come up the canyon road because that was the only possible route down a plain blocked by impassable canyons. But at the extreme eastern edge of the plain where the lateral canyons headed, they also became very shallow and flattened out, and it was up this flat strip at the base of the mountains that Santa Anna was pushing his troops. It was late in the day before General Taylor received this information. Scowling at his oversight, he now saw what Santa Anna intended to do: One Mexican force would indeed come up the canyon road, staying just beyond range of the American guns, and serving as a constant threat to keep Taylor from using his artillery elsewhere. The main attack would come from the left side. Like a chess player confronted with a totally unexpected move on the part of his opponent, Taylor now had to alter his defense, and quickly, before the Mexicans swarmed up the east side of the plain and circled behind him to cut him off from his supply base at Saltillo. To block them, Taylor withdrew part of his artillery from the defense of the canyon road and sent the horsedrawn cannons pounding to the east, supported by infantry and cavalry units.

And then, as night fell, Taylor rode back to Saltillo to make sure his supply base was adequately defended. The American defensive movement continued all night as the line between the river and the mountains to the east was strengthened. Shortly before dawn, Lt. Col. Roane and four more companies of Arkansas troops joined the Indiana Regiment in support of Yell's companies at the far end of the line. In the cold high air of the mountain night, the men shivered and waited hopefully for the warm light of dawn. But the experience that awaited them at sunrise was neither warm nor pleasant, for as the first rays of the sun broke through the craggy mountains to the east, these ill-trained, poorly disciplined volunteers from Arkansas found themselves face to face with the advance guard of the Mexican army. The Mexican artillery, established on the slopes of the mountains, opened a furious barrage, the shells bursting near the American position, sending up great plumes of dirt. And behind the screen of smoke came the first wave of Mexican cavalry, the dread lancers, their bugles blowing in the shrill, wild notes of a charge. Colonel Yell did the only thing he could do at the moment: he ordered his men to fall back beyond range of the Mexican artillery to regroup and make a stand against the Mexican lancers. But once the withdrawal had begun, nothing could stop it, and it became a precipitate retreat. Panicked to wild desperation by the shells and the thundering line of horsemen in the distance, the Arkansas boys refused to stop and make a stand. Yell and Roane, chagrined and furious, fell back with their troops, trying to rally them, but for the Arkansas volunteers the war was over and they wanted no part of it.

General Taylor returned from Saltillo at dawn, just in time to see the entire left side of his line crumble. The Indiana troops, who were willing to fight, were now pressed back toward the hacienda, a great tide of Mexican troops flooding in behind them as they vacated the field. The situation was desperate at this point, for there was nothing to stop Santa Anna from throwing his troops around the hacienda and containing the American army, cutting Taylor off from his supplies, and pounding his forces to pieces with artillery. But as the Mexicans pushed closer to the hacienda and the ranch buildings, Taylor put everything he had against them, including Jefferson Davis' "Mississippi Rifles" and Captain May's American regulars, supported by Pike's company, recently arrived from Saltillo.

In the wild fighting, Pike had a brief meeting with Yell which he described in a letter home: "When Colonel Yell saw us returning from a detail of duty we had been ordered to do in another part of the field, he seemed much elated. Calling to me, he asked if we had come to join him. In reply, I told him that General Wool had placed us under the command of Colonel May. To this, Yell replied: 'I am sorry for it; but if that is the order, it cannot be helped; but I should like to have you with me."
"As we left them, they, Yell and (Col. Humphrey) Marshall, were forming their men to resist the enemy. As I saw the situation, I had the thought that, not for want of bravery but for lack of discipline, they would become disorganized, if and when they were attacked by the enemy. I never saw Yell again, for we were just then ordered to the right, where we got in range of heavy firing. There we stayed, until Colonel May ordered us lower down, under the shelter of a hill."

In time, Colonel Marshall and Colonel Yell, when their position was threatened, judged it best to retire into the plain, and did so in tolerable good order, until they came within 200 yards of the ranch of Buena Vista. Meanwhile, they were followed by several hundred lancers and hussars who came down into the plain after them.

When the lancers and hussars followed down after Yell's and Marshall's cavalry, Colonel May was ordered to take his command and a piece of artillery and proceed to Buena Vista to protect the wagon trains. As we approached the village, Marshall and Yell were forming their men to receive the enemy. They waited until the Mexicans came within 40 yards, and then each man raised his carbine and fired. The fire of our men did but little harm. The utmost confusion ensued. Colonel Marshall says that his men routed and pursued a part of the enemy. The gallant officer was cool and composed and doubtless his statement is correct."

But as the hordes of Mexicans charged Yell and the men he had left, there was no time for them to draw their sabers, and they "crowded and huddled together." Colonel Yell, opening his mouth to give a command, looked around just in time to see a Mexican lancer charge him. There was no time to escape, and the sharp lance caught him in the left cheek and ripped off the side of his face, killing him. Captain Andrew D. Porter of Company D, the "Independence County Volunteers," also died at the hands of the lancers as he fought alongside Colonel Yell, for during the whole battle he was suffering from a severe bout of rheumatism, and his arm was so stiff that he could not draw his saber to defend himself.

Inexplicably, when the rout of Yell's company was complete, the Mexican lancers wheeled in the dust and began to retreat, and as they ran a body of American cavalry took up the pursuit. Passing near the ranch, the Mexicans were greeted with a "warm fire of musketry, which killed many of them and some of our own men in pursuit."

"Just then," Pike continued, "Colonel May's command to which we were attached, came down the road at a gallop, by fours; formed platoons and halted for a moment to let the dust blow off so that we could see the enemy and not kill our own people. I had only a momentary glimpse of the enemy, who, taken by surprise at our arrival, seemed wild with fear, and, not' waiting for our charge, fled precipitately in every direction. We pursued them for some distance and then formed in line and took position on the other side of the ranch. The Mexicans made their way across the ravine to the west, descended into the cultivated plain below, huddled together there for a few minutes, as if undecided what to do, and finally commenced ascending the mountain by a narrow pass.

Having, as they did, a superior force, it was incredible that the Mexicans should have failed to press their advantage to a victory, and American military historians have puzzled over this enigma for a century. Following their rout of the east half of Taylor's line, the Mexicans could have regrouped and overrun the American position; but, inexplicably, they did not. Perhaps Santa Anna lacked a cohesive strategy; perhaps he could not control his men; but for the rest of the day the disposition of the Mexican forces was highly erratic. Instead of making a concerted and decisive attack, various groups of cavalry swept singly from the hills in a series of wild charges, replete with blowing bugles and strident battle cries. One group of horsemen, for no reason at all, charged in a wide circle all the way around the American army to join the Mexican force on the canyon road below Buena Vista.

Another peculiar incident concerned Colonel Jefferson Davis and his "Mississippi Rifles." Advancing in a line across the eastern plain, they were suddenly attacked by a detachment of Mexican cavalry that thundered out of the hills toward them. Davis' men stopped dead in their tracks and leveled their rifles at the approaching horsemen, becoming perfectly motionless with the quiet calm of backwoodsmen on a squirrel hunt, The Mexicans, disconcerted by this strange and motionless silence, reined their horses to an abrupt halt, openly confused, highly nervous, not knowing what to expect. For a long moment, as if time had been suspended, the two groups faced each other in perfect silence, Then Davis gave the command to fire, and the line of American rifles exploded, emptying the saddles of the front rank of Mexican cavalrymen, and sending the rest of the lancers scampering for the safety of the hills.

The battle continued all through the afternoon of the 23rd, man to man in the beginning and later as an artillery duel. Slowly but steadily, the Mexicans were pushed back. As night came and the moon rode over the hills, the position of the two armies was exactly as it had been the night before. Nothing had changed except that the quiet fields around Buena Vista were now littered with dead men. Medical details carried stretchers through the darkness, tracing the moans of the wounded men who had not been found by day, and exhausted soldiers shivered around their campfires, too tired to talk, too numb to do more than sit and stare into the shadows and try to sleep.

In his tent, Taylor went over his maps and shook his head, worn out, unhappy over the prospect of tomorrow's battle. The Americans would have little chance against the apparently inexhaustible Mexican reserves. They had been able, by an almost superhuman effort and at a great cost, to swing the gate shut against the Mexicans and hold the defensive line. But Taylor knew they would not be able to repeat this miracle again.

But under the same moon, to the south, Santa Anna, his bad leg stretched stiff before him, was holding a conference with his field officers. The day's battle had depleted his forces more than Taylor could realize, and the morale of his men was at a low ebb. His men were tired; their stomach for fighting was gone; and the discipline in the Mexican army was so poor that no general, however popular, could compel his men to fight against their will. That will was now gone. Santa Anna had no choice. He ordered a forced march south, and the cavalry withdrew from the hills and the infantrymen slipped out of the canyon in the darkness for a long march through the chill night to San Luis Potosi.

When morning came, and Taylor discovered that the Mexicans had abandoned the field during the night, he immediately fired off dispatches to Washington proclaiming with triumphant vindictiveness the victory he had won against the tremendous odds of a superior Mexican force and in spite of the meddling of the Polk administration. And the soldiers on the field celebrated with the exuberance of men awarded a sudden reprieve from battle and a victory as well.

On the march back to Saltillo, the joyous men of the Little Rock Guards took great delight in needling the Arkansas volunteers who had run when the going got rough. Tempers flared, and the baiting resulted in a rash of fist fights. At last, to keep the whole army from getting involved and taking sides, General Taylor had the Little Rock Guards separated from the rest of the Arkansas volunteers.

Shortly after the battle, Pike wrote two documents that were, in essence, contradictory. The first was poetry, a heroic ballad of sixteen stanzas that described the victory in glowing terms, and ended:

Now that Pike had paid his tribute to "those that stood" with his poem, he was free to turn his attention and bring "disgrace to those that fled." This was accomplished with an open letter he sent back to Little Rock to be published in the Arkansas Gazette. It was a damning document, carefully composed, written by a man who felt that the disgraceful episode could have been avoided altogether if the election of regimental officers had not been decided on political popularity. And it was on the officers that he fixed the blame. "It is a sad thing that brave men, for they were brave, should be destroyed for want of discipline," Pike wrote. He elaborated this theme and traced the lack of discipline back to the days in camp at San Antonio. "In the first place, the companies of our regiment . . . had hardly been drilled at all, except what little the company officers had done. The Colonel and the Lieutenant Colonel had never drilled them once since they left San Antonio." Under such lax commanders, it was only logical that the troops should run when they were attacked. "Had they . . . possessed that mobility and facility of changing front which only discipline could give, they could not have been routed as they were." And once the rout started, there was no hope of getting them together again because "the astonishing confusion for want of discipline utterly broke up, dispersed and disorganized their commands, so that they could not be collected together." No, it was not the enlisted men but the officers who should be blamed for this fiasco. Colonel Yell was now beyond censure. "Poor Yell!" Pike wrote. "He atoned for his error with his life. . ." Since Major Borland had been captured, the process of elimination left only one regimental officer to bear the brunt of the blame, John S. Roane, who had succeeded Yell as colonel of the regiment.

Soon after he had sent this letter back to Arkansas, Pike and two dozen of his men rode across the desert to the town of Chihuahua to carry a message to Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan. The letter was published in the Gazette on April 24, 1847, and by the time Pike rode back to Saltillo in the first week in May, he found the members of the Arkansas regiment seething with resentment at what they felt was an accusation of cowardice. Pike was certain that Colonel Roane had spread the report among the men to stir up resentment against him, and so great was the resultant antagonism and so many were the threats of violence against him that he asked General Wool for a court of inquiry to settle the matter.

The court convened on May 4th in front of all the officers in the regiment, and Pike expressed his opinions again, a little less strongly perhaps than he had done in his letter, but not the least bit hesitant about laying the blame for the rout to a lack of good leadership and firm discipline. He said he had never accused the regiment of cowardice, and softened the charge against Roane somewhat by saying that the fiasco had, in part, stemmed from the "1ack of military skill in the commander." Perhaps this singling out of Yell as the man to blame satisfied Roane. In any event, he announced to the court that he was satisfied with Pike's explanation, and the court expressed the opinion that the whole difficulty had grown out of a misunderstanding that had now been cleared up and amicably resolved.

For the time being, perhaps it had, for the Arkansas regiment was preparing for discharge and there were arrangements to be made to get to the coast to book passage on a ship for New Orleans with connections for a steamboat journey up to Little Rock, and in the excitement of going home it was relatively easy to forget incidents that were already a part of the past In the early part of June, the boys from Arkansas received their pay and started home.

As the Little Rock Guards prepared to leave Mexico, a special detail went to Saltillo to look for Archibald Yell's grave. It was not hard to find because the famous Santa Fe traveler Josiah Gregg had supervised the burial and erected a cross bearing Yell's name. The men dug up the tin coffin and took it by wagon to the port where it was loaded on a ship to be taken back to Little Rock.

The first indication that Pike's dispute was still alive occurred when the steamboat carrying Pike, Roane and a large section of the Arkansas regiment arrived at the boat landing at Little Rock (Ed. at the foot of Commerce Street, where the River Market is today.) to be met at the wharf by a crowd of cheering people. One of Roane's men, a boy named J. D. Adams, was greeted by his father, who sang out in a loud voice, "I hear you all fought like hell at Buena Vista," J.D. snickered, and shouted back, "We ran like hell at Buena Vista." There was a ripple of appreciative laughter in the crowd. A few people did not laugh at all. Colonel Roane , of course, was one of them.

Pike went home to rest. Almost immediately, he discovered that he had not been the only man writing letters home. Colonel Roane and a captain named Edward Hunter, of Company C, had published some very damning letters in the Arkansas Banner discrediting Pike and stating that Pike's squadron had not even taken part in the battle of Buena Vista. Pike was incensed when he read them. And now the bitterness he had felt since the day of the election was renewed within him.
Sitting down at his writing desk, he challenged Roane to a duel. Roane promptly accepted. The two men agreed to meet on the morning of July 29th on a sandbar in the Arkansas River across from Fort Smith, an area outside the jurisdiction of the anti-dueling laws of Arkansas.

On the 29th, Roane and his party, which included his seconds, Henry M. Rector and Robert W. Johnson, and his surgeon, Dr. Philip Burton, rode into Fort Smith to stay at the house of Major Elias Rector. Roane passed the time practicing with his pistol on the Rector lawn as he waited for the morning of the duel.

On the morning of the 29th, attracted by word of the impending gun fight, a large crowd of spectators, including a group of curious Cherokees, gathered at the sandbar. The seconds had to move them back to make space for the duelists. Pike arrived with his seconds, Luther Chase and John Drennen; his surgeon, Dr. James A. Dibrell, Sr., and three friends, and assumed his position, calmly smoking a cigar. Roane, with two days' practice, was equally unruffled. The call was made, and Pike and Roane stepped forward, facing each other at a distance of ten paces, while the loaded dueling pistols were examined by the seconds and handed to the principals. Pike examined his pistol cursorily. When the word was given, be raised it with a steady hand and pulled the trigger. Both pistols fired; neither man was hurt. The pistols were reloaded while Pike calmly puffed on his cigar. The command was then repeated, and both pistols fired again. There was an audible intake of breath from the crowd, and some of the spectators swore that Roane's bullet had sizzled through Pike's heavy beard.

After the second firing, Pike and Roane retired from their positions while the guns were being loaded again, and Pike sat down on a cottonwood log near the edge of the forest that fringed the sandbar, with his surgeon beside him. But now, Dr. Burton, Roane's surgeon, beckoned Dr. Dibrell to one side for a hurried conference. "Dibrell," he said, "it's a damned shame that these men should stand here and shoot at each other until one or the other is killed or wounded. They have shown themselves to be brave men and would fire all day unless prevented. The seconds on neither side can interfere, because it would be considered a great disparagement for either to make a proposition for cessation of hostilities. So, let us, as surgeons, assume the responsibility and say they shall not fire another time; that unless they do as we desire we will leave the field to them helpless, however cruel it might seem.

Dibrell, although he agreed with Burton, did not know what the dueling code would say. In any event, he could not make such an arbitrary decision without first talking to Pike. Leaving Burton where he was, Dibrell walked over to the log and told Pike what Burton had said. Pike looked up at him sharply. "I want one more fire at him," he said. "I believe he has tried to kill me; I have not tried to hit him." He paused and flicked the ash off his cigar, apparently reconsidering. What had happened at Buena Vista seemed a long way off, part of a world that had little connection with Fort Smith and a sandbar in the Arkansas River. He looked up at Dibrell. "Do as you think proper," he said. "But do not by anything compromise my honor."

Dibrell relayed the word to Burton, and Burton walked over to Roane. In a few minutes, Roane approached Pike and extended his hand. A flask of a Southern libation was opened and passed around, and what had happened at Buena Vista would never be mentioned by either of them again. They went back to Major Elias Rector's house together, where they celebrated the end of the war with a round of drinks and a banquet that lasted far into the night.

AND SO ENDED THE GREAT ADVENTURE in the Mexican War. Lt. Colonel Roane ran for Governor in the next election and won, serving a single term from 1849 to 1851. He later became a Confederate general, commanding the district of Arkansas after the departure of Van Dorn in 1862, and as a brigade commander under Hindman later that summer. Major Solon Borland returned to his medical practice, dabbled in the legislature, and ran for Congress. At the beginning of the Civil War, he raised the 3rd Arkansas Cavalry Regiment and led it briefly, resigning for health concerns. And as it often does, the opportunity to participate in a shooting war cooled Captain Pike's enthusiasm for things military. He resigned from the Little Rock Guards after they returned home, and devoted himself to his law practice, and to representing the tribes in the neighboring Indian Territory.

The Little Rock Guards returned to their pre-war routine of periodic drills, and of course an active social schedule, rightly proud of their excellent performance in the Mexican War. The realities of war and active campaigning, as well as the carnage seen at Buena Vista and in Mexico had, however taken much of the "shine" off militia service. One by one the members dropped out, until the Guards were only a shadow of their former self.

Partially in response to the increasing troubles along the frontier instigated by the political disputes resulting from the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1856, efforts were undertaken to revive the Little Rock militia company. The unit's name was changed to the "Capital Guards", reflecting Little Rock's increasing stature as the seat of the State government. Gordon N. Peay, whose family owned and operated the Anthony House, was elected as their captain.

The nation's growing political disputes came to a head with the 1860 national and state elections. Not only was there the national problem of a fragmented Democratic party with three candidates facing a single, viable candidate from the upstart Republican party, but State politics were in upheaval by the defeat of the old political dynasty by Henry M. Rector, who soon showed his colors as a secessionist.

Even more, and larger storm clouds lay onthe horizon for the Capitol Guards...

Since everyone appeared to enjoy this past summer's serialized stories of the Capitol Guards' pre-Civil War history, here's a follow-up on their service in Mexico. While at the Butler Center inthe Central Arkansas Library looking for material for the Christmas issue of the Sentinel, I found the muster roll of Pike's Company in the Mexican War... and here it is!

For those fans of First In - Last Out, Cal Collier's history of the Company's role in the Civil War, it's interesting to compare this roster with the roster in Collier's book to see how many family names were still on the roll when "our war" came some 15 years later.

This company mustered on 31 August 1846 at San Antonio, Texas; 31 October 1846 at Monclova, Mexico; 31 December 1846 at Haciende de Patos, Mexico; 28 February 1847 at Saltillo, Mexico; 7 June 1847 at Monterey, Mexico.

ADAMSON, William; Pvt.
ANSON, Hiram; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
BALES, Stephen; Pvt.
BARNES, William K.; Pvt. disab. disc. 10 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
BLUNDEN, William N.; Bugler
BOLTON, Franklin; Pvt.
BORDEN, John B.; Pvt.
BROCK, A. Hamilton; Pvt.
BROCK, James; Pvt
BROOKIN, Samuel; Pvt.
BROWNLEE, Thomas; Pvt.
BUTLER, Sterling G.; Pvt.
BYRD, William; Corporal. disab. Disc. 25 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
CAUSIN, William H.; 2nd Lt.
CELLARS, C. Andrew; Pvt.
COLLINS, Hugh; Pvt.
COLLINS, Joseph A.; Pvt.
CREASE, Henry; Corporal.
CROUCH, Augustus; Bugler
DISMUKES, Elisha E.; Pvt
DUFF, Richard L.; Pvt.
EAGLE, George A.; Pvt
EAGLE, Joseph; Pvt. age 25, died 6 Oct. 1846 at San Antonio
ERWIN, Edwin L.; Pvt
FARRELLY, Robert C.; Pvt.
FREYSCHLAG, Herman; Pvt.
FURR, Daniel O.; Pvt
GARNER, Joseph N.; Pvt
GLASCOW, William; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept. at San Antonio
GOODRESSON, John; Pvt.
GRAY, Henry C.; Pvt. age 18 died 22 Jan. 1847 at Saltillo
GRAY, Jacob S.; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
GRAY, William C.; Pvt.
HAMMOND, Elijah; Pvt.
HAMMOND, William H.; Pvt.
HARNEGAN, Enos; Pvt.
HARMS, George F.; Pvt
HARRIS, George F.; Pvt. disab. disc. 18 Nov. 1846 at Monclova
HENDRICKS, James H.; Pvt.
HICKS, William F.; Corporal.
HINKSTON, John M.; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
HINKSTON, Sampson G.; Pvt. disab. disc. 26 Sept. 1846 at San Antonio
HOGAN, John; Pvt.
JOHNSON, Isaac; Pvt. wounded at Buena Vista
JONES, James; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept 1846 at San Antonio
JONES, Jesse; Pvt.
KNAPP, George; Pvt. discharged 23 Dec 1847
McVICAR, James; Pvt. appointed Master Sergeant by Col. Yell, transferred 17 Dec 1846
MORRISON, George L.; Pvt.
MOSELY, John; Pvt. age 24 died 5 Dec 1847 at Monclova
MUSSER, George; Pvt.
NEWMAN, Milton P.; Pvt.
NEWMAN, William C.; Pvt. age 23 died 24 Nov 1846, San Antonio
PATE, Edward; Pvt.
PATTERSON, William; Pvt. age 19 died 18 Jan 1847 at Saltillo
PEAY, John C.; 2nd Lt.
PIKE, Albert; Captain
POE, William; Pvt. deserted 5 Oct. 1846 at San Antonio
PSCHEIMER, Jacob; Pvt
PURSLEY (Pasley ?) David; Pvt. age 44 died 27 Feb 1847 Saltillo
REED, James; Pvt.
REYNOLDS, Hamilton; 1st Lt.
ROSE, George; Pvt.
SCHLATTER, Adan; Pvt.
SCHNEIDER, Joseph; Farrier
SCHWEITZER, Jacob; Pvt. disab. disc. 13 Sept 1846 San Antonio
SITZES, Lawson; Pvt.
SMITH, Elias; Pvt
SMITH, Woods; Pvt. disab. disc. 25 Sept 1846 at San Antonio
STEPHENSON, James T.; Sergeant.
STEPHENSON, John C.; Sergeant.
SULLIVAN, Christopher; Sergeant. wounded at Saltillo 23 Feb 1847
TERRY, John; Pvt.
THARPE, John D.; Pvt.
TOLER, William; Corporal.
USSERY, Morgan; Pvt
WHITE, Newton; Pvt. age 18 died 13 Feb. 1847 Los Polonius
WHITELY, Lambert A.; Sergeant.
WOLFE, Charles; Pvt.
WOODRUFF, Alden; Pvt. appointed 2nd Lt. 12th Regt. U.S. Army

THE MEXICAN WAR EXPERIENCES OF
ALBERT PIKE AND THE “MOUNTED DEVILS”
OF ARKANSAS

In April, 1846, the United States went to war with Mexico over the disputed question of the Rio Grande boundary. To vindicate the shedding of “American blood upon the American soil,” Congress on May 13 gave President James K. Polk authority to call into service up to 50,000 volunteers. Two days later Secretary of War W. L. Marcv addressed a letter to Governor Thomas S. Drew of Arkansas, requesting him to organize immediately one regiment of cavalry, or “mounted gunmen,” and one battalion of infantry. The cavalry regiment was to rendezvous at Washington, Arkansas, where the men would be mustered into the service of the United States. The infantrymen were to report to Fort Smith as replacements for the troops on the frontier, now all ordered to the Rio Grande by General Taylor. [1] In response Governor Drew issued a call for volunteers on May 27. [2]

Albert Pike, the Whig leader of Arkansas, who had been since 1843 captain of the Little Rock Guards, an artillery company of the state militia, received this news with little joy. He knew that his men would be anxious to go to Mexico and that he would be expected to lead them. He also knew that it would mean a great personal sacrifice to surrender his valuable law practice for a year; but greater still must have been the humiliation he felt at the thought of serving in a Democratic war with which he had little sympathy. [3] With these things in mind, Pike, who was absent from Little Rock attending a session of the Hempstead County Circuit Court when the request for volunteers appeared, immediately dispatched a letter to the chief executive of the state offering him the “service of one company of infantry.” [4] But when Pike returned to Little Rock a few days later, he discovered that his men would not be satisfied to sit out the war at Fort Smith. At a special meeting on June 7 the Guards voted to volunteer as a company of “Flying Artillery” for duty in Mexico. Should their services as artillerists not be accepted by the governor, they requested to be sent as a company of horse in the Arkansas cavalry regiment. [5]

Pike, notified by Governor Drew that his company would be received in the service of the United States only as mounted gunmen, accepted the inevitable, hurriedly converted the Guards into a cavalry corps, and arranged with Jessie Turner of Van Buren, Arkansas, to assume charge of his law practice during his absence. [6] By June 15 Pike’s command had acquired its full complement of horsemen and had held a new election of officers. In the voting Pike was the unanimous choice for captain, while Hamilton Reynolds and William H. Causins were elected first and second lieutenants respectively. [7] On June 20 the company left for the rendezvous in Hempstead County. [8]

All ten companies of the Arkansas regiment were assembled at Washington on July 7 when the election of regimental officers took place. Pike was nominated for regimental colonel to oppose Archibald Yell, who had resigned his seat in Congress and returned to Arkansas to enlist as a private in Solon Borland’s company. Pike was easily the most experienced and capable leader in the Arkansas cavalry, but ability counted for little in the eyes of the volunteers. Pike’s Whig affiliation, his aristocratic air, and his reputation as a “strict disciplinarian,” [9] most surely gave the citizen soldiers of Arkansas a dark view of what they might expect from him. In the balloting only the officers participated. Pike was passed over in favor of Yell, who was popular as a politician if he knew nothing whatever of military matters. [10] Two other Democrats, John Selden Roane and Solon Borland, were elected lieutenant colonel and major, respectively. [11]

The regimental election over, the Arkansas volunteers were mustered into the service of the United States government on July 13. [12] Five days later the regiment marched with 800 men and a train of forty wagons for Shreveport, Louisiana, 110 miles away, the first lap of the journey to San Antonio, Texas, where they were to report to Brigadier General John E. Wool, then busily engaged training and organizing an expedition against the State of Chihuahua. [13] After a six day march the Arkansas column reached Shreveport, where it was learned that they were to march overland to San Antonio. The march from Shreveport got underway on July 26. Eleven days later the column arrived at Robbin’s Ferry on the Trinity River, some 165 miles southwest of Shreveport. Here the regiment lay by to receive supplies which had been shipped up the Trinity by steamboat. Bad weather and incessant rain delayed the departure from Robbin’s Ferry until August 10, when the regiment again took up the march. Sunday, August 16, found them ferrying across the Brazos River at the town of Washington, a former capital of the Republic of Texas situated just below the mouth of the Navasota River. At last on August 28 the column reached the general rendezvous at San Antonio. [14]

General Wool ordered the Arkansas regiment to encamp at a point some four miles from San Antonio on the small stream that ran through the town. [15 ] In getting the companies into camp Colonel Yell not only placed them in reverse order, but also failed to make provisions for sanitation in the area. When General Wool came out to inspect the Arkansas regiment a few days later, he noted the unorthodox position of the companies and the unusually poor condition of the camp and immediately ordered them out. “We broke camp,” said Pike, “and marched out on a ridge a mile or two away where there was no water. It was a hotter place than ‘purgatory’. My company dwindled to sixteen men fit for duty.” [16] Another officer in the Arkansas cavalry, while highly pleased with the first encampment, described this last campground as lying “in an open plain, without a particle of shade ... during an excessively hot time.” “We have suffered terribly,” he went on, “… [and] one morning had nearly 200 on the sick list.” [17]

Such stern measures on the part of General Wool did little to make him popular among the “Arkansas Devils,” as he soon came to call the Arkansas volunteers. A glimpse of the esteem in which “Old Wool” was held by Colonel Yell’s men may be had from the diary of a private in one of the Illinois companies :

General Wool is liked less every day by the volunteers because of his aristocratic manner and his harsh treatment of them. The Arkansas Volunteer Cavalry, which General Wool calls Colonel Yell’s Mounted Devils, if provoked by him, would at the first opportunity blow out his life. Recently an Arkansas volunteer passing the General’s tent, stopped and out of curiosity looked in. It displeased the General, and he told him to leave ; as he did not leave immediately, he told his orderly to point his gun at him. The Arkansas soldier pointed his gun at General Wool and said, “Old Horse, damn your soul, if you give such orders I will shoot you for certain.” General Wool withdrew quickly. Another Arkansas soldier who met the General wearing civilian clothes in his tent, asked him, “Stranger, have you seen my bay horse this morning?” although he knew it was General Wool. Another time General Wool sent his orderly to the Arkansas camp with the request not to make too much noise. The Arkansan replied, “Tell Johnny Wool to kiss our ass.” [18]

For his part, Pike held such conduct among the Arkansas volunteers to be contemptible. He maintained, with probable truth, that their treatment at the hands of General Wool was a direct result of poor leadership by Colonel Yell, whom Pike thought “totally incompetent and unable to learn… [He] is the laughing stock of the men for as yet he has never undertaken to give an order without making a blunder.” [19] It would seem that only two of the company commanders — Pike and John Preston — had attempted to drill their men since their arrival at San Antonio. Indeed, Pike had the distinction of being the only officer in the regiment who drilled his men while en route from Arkansas. [20] Doubtlessly Pike’s criticism of Colonel Yell was for political consumption on the home front, and it may have been in part the result of soreness over his defeat by Yell in the regimental election. But even such a good Democrat as Major Solon Borland reported from San Antonio that “things in our regiment [have not] been well managed.” [21]

By the middle of September General Wool’s army was collected at San Antonio. He marched September 26 with some 1,950 men upon his assigned mission of going to Chihuahua. Four companies of the Arkansas regiment remained behind under Major Borland to come up with the rear party with additional supplies. Pike’s company, its sick left with Major Borland, marched with the advance column under Colonel Yell. [22] On October 12 the Arkansas cavalry, along with the remainder of General Wool’s force, crossed the Rio Grande opposite the Mexican town of Presidio. [23] Once across the river the army encamped to await orders from General Taylor, who, it was learned, had taken Monterey and signed an armistice. A member of Pike’s company wrote home :

Since the news of the Armistice; and our peaceful and bloodless entry into Presidio, all are convinced that the war is quite concluded, are anxious to return —none more so than myself.
I am sick of ranging over uninteresting country, looking for an enemy we cannot find. … Capt. Pike … would, himself, gladly be on his way home. He is most anxious for our immediate discharge, which may take place. [24]

But the Arkansas volunteers were not destined to return home at this juncture. General Wool determined to move on to Monclova. Pike’s and Preston’s companies were separated from the Arkansas regiment and formed into a squadron under command of Pike, the senior captain. Pike was then ordered to escort the topographical engineers in reconnoitering the route to Santa Rosa, which was to be the first stop for the main army on the road to Monclova. [25] Pike’s party left Presidio on the morning of October 15. Four days later the detail reached Santa Rosa, 105 miles west of Presidio. The next morning, October 20, Pike’s “squadron marched into town with flags flying and sabres drawn” to accept its surrender. He then waited for the main army to come up on October 24. [26] From Santa Rosa General Wool’s column moved to Monclova, situated 200 miles south of the Rio Grande, thence on November 24 was ordered to march to Parras, 120 miles west of Saltillo, which the army reached on December 5. [27]

Pike’s squadron was placed under Colonel Yell’s command at Parras, where it remained until December 17, when a false alarm from General Worth at Saltillo that the enemy was advancing upon him resulted in a hasty march to Agua Nueva, “twenty miles south of Saltillo, on the San Luis Potosi road.” There Pike again encamped with the Arkansas regiment. [28] On January 31 his squadron was permanently detached from Colonel Yell’s corps and ordered to report to General Wool at Saltillo. From Saltillo he was ordered on February 8 to Las Palomas, “a narrow pass through the mountains” twelve miles northeast of Saltillo, to relieve the Kentucky cavalry regiment posted there. From Las Palomas on February 14 Pike reported he was

… putting up a small fortification — a redoubt 24 yards square, with a small lunette covering the entrance... .

We do not know whether Santa Anna is at San Luis, or marching this way as reported; but we are instructed to use all possible vigilance and make daily and nightly reconnaissance of the roads. So, with picket and camp guard, inspection at Reveille, dress-parade at Sunset, and brick-hauling and port-building all day beside, our men are pretty busy: but they have all hardened into good soldiers and stand it admirably. [29]

Meanwhile the remainder of the Arkansas cavalry had been faring poorly. Major Borland, who had rejoined the regiment at Monclova in October, and thirty-four Arkansas volunteers were captured on January 22 while on a reconnaissance detail to La Encarnacion, a town forty miles south of Agua Nueva. [30] And during the first week of February a member of Captain Christopher C. Danley’s [31] company was murdered by Mexican civilians. In retaliation a secret party among the men of Danley’s and Edward Hunter’s companies rode forth to Cantana, two or three miles distance from Agua Nueva, and killed and wounded several innocent people suspected of the murder. The affair was investigated, said Josiah Gregg, but “owing to the difficulty of identifying the men,” who, it seems, were not accompanied by any officers, nothing was done with them. [32] General Taylor made a diligent attempt to discover the Arkansans guilty of the atrocity, threatening for awhile to discharge the two companies as an example to other volunteers; but at last changed his mind out of fairness to the innocent men in the commands involved. [33]

Pike was still at Las Palomas when he learned on February 20 that Santa Anna had reached Encarnacion. The following day he was ordered back to Saltillo to strengthen the city’s defenses. On the morning of February 22 Pike was ordered to march with General Taylor to Buena Vista, seven miles south of Saltillo, where the American army was deployed to receive the expected attack of Santa Anna’s forces. But Pike was ordered back to Saltillo before the party reached their destination. Returning to town, he dismounted his squadron and deployed them upon the housetops along the central plaza. [34]

That afternoon the Mexicans attacked at Buena Vista, but nothing except light skirmishing and indefinite movements occurred before dark. In the evening General Taylor returned to Saltillo, the central depot of the American force, reported still in danger of an assault from General Minon. Taylor provided for the city’s defense and the next morning returned to Buena Vista, taking with him beside May’s squadron and Davis’s regiment, Pike’s squadron. [35]

By the time Taylor reached the battlefield on the morning of February 23 Santa Anna’s forces had turned the American left flank and were threatening the rear supply train at Buena Vista Ranch. At dawn Colonels Yell and Marshall at the extreme left flank had received the main shock of the Mexican charge, and their inexperienced men, along with the Second Indiana Regiment and four companies of Arkansas volunteers under Lieutenant Colonel Roane, who before daybreak had been transferred to the left center to support the Indiana brigade, had been routed. Exactly what happened to the Arkansas troops during this early morning action is a matter of controversy. James Henry Carleton, an officer and eyewitness to the battle, reported that the four Arkansas companies at the left center retired almost at the first firing. He thought that as individuals “they were as brave as any men in the world. But their being entirely without discipline, or any habit of strict military obedience, and their consequent want of confidence in their leaders and in each other, may be fairly assigned as the principal reasons for their precipitate retreat.” [36]

Augustus F. Ehinger, a private in the Second Illinois Regiment, who had been shocked, and therefore prejudiced, by the unsoldierly conduct of the Arkansas volunteers who murdered the innocent Mexicans at Cantana, [37] recorded on March 7, 1847, that “The Arkansas Regiment, just as Gen. Taylor predicted, though they boasted, were very cowardly in battle. The most of them left their brave Colonel when he made his charge on the Lancers, where he met his death.” [38] Josiah Gregg, another eyewitness, said that he did not “expect raw volunteers to stand the severe fire” of the superior numbers of the Mexican force. “In truth,” he said, “the 4 companies of Ark. riflemen (commanded by Col. Roane), were, I believe, almost entirely dispersed.” [39] And Pike, airing past and present grievances, wrote home to the Arkansas public a week after the battle that the men under Colonel Yell at the extreme left behaved poorly. Exposed to the fire of a Mexican eight-pounder battery, said Pike,

Col. Yell ordered… [his men] to retreat a little way, in order to avoid the cannon range, intending then to wait a charge of the lancers supporting the battery. But the men untaught to maneuver and totally undisciplined, understood the word retreat, to be an order to make, each man, the best of his way to the rear… turned and ran off in great confusion. Col. Yell, who behaved most gallantly, the adjutant, [Major Gaston] Meares… and others, succeeded in rallying a portion of them… but a great many of them ran to Saltillo. [40]

Others reported, however, that Marshall’s and Yell’s men put up a stubborn fight for several hours before being driven from the mountainside by a Mexican force which outnumbered them three or four to one. [41]

Seeing the critical state of affairs along the left flank, General Taylor immediately ordered Davis’s regiment to the left to meet the advancing Mexicans. He then sent May, with Pike’s squadron added to his command, to reinforce Colonels Yell and Marshall, who with their partially rallied troops were withstanding a severe charge directly east of the Buena Vista Ranch buildings. [42] In the melee that followed Colonel Yell, “facing the foe and trying to rally his men,” was killed, [43] though May’s and Pike’s timely arrival dispersed the Mexican lancers and sent them scampering to the west to the safety of the hills on that side. [44] In the meantime Davis’s Mississippi Rifles, Colonel Joseph Lane’s Third Indiana Regiment, and Sherman’s and Bragg’s batteries had repulsed a heavier charge southeast of Buena Vista, putting the Mexicans in full retreat at the American left. An unexplained flag of truce, which passed between the two armies at this point, enabled the imperiled Mexican soldiers to re-gain the main army. Late that afternoon the American artillery broke the back of Santa Anna’s last great effort. When night came on, his army retreated leaving Taylor’s forces victorious. [45]

Because there was some degree of jealousy and friction between the officers and men of Pike’s squadron and those of the Arkansas regiment the two commands remained separated after the return to Saltillo following the battle. In April Pike and twenty-five of his men went to Chihuahua to deliver a message from General Taylor to Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan. [46] By the time Pike returned the twelve months’ enlistment of his squadron was almost up. Consequently near the end of May the squadron was ordered to Monterey, where he and his men were on June 7 paid and mustered out of the service. [47] Anxious to return home, Pike and the majority of the squadron took deck passage on a ship to New Orleans, thence by steamboat up the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers to Little Rock.

Arriving at the hometown landing on July 9, the volunteers were welcomed by a large crowd. On the same boat with Pike and his men were Colonel Roane and several members of the Arkansas regiment. William F. Pope tells that as the men were debarking the father of one of Colonel Roane’s men, J. D. Adams, greeted his son and said, “I hear you all fought like hell at Buena Vista.” But J. D., who was still in his teens, gave “one of his characteristic laughs [and] replied: ‘We ran like hell at Buena Vista’.” “The Joke,” said Pope, “was greatly relished by some, but not by all.” [48] Within two weeks the joy of the homecoming was to be marred by a much more unpleasant occurrence — a duel between Pike and Roane.

For the genesis of this quarrel it is necessary to go back to Saltillo, where, on March 8, Pike wrote home to the editor of the Gazette a description of the battle of Buena Vista. He passed up no opportunity to criticize the leadership of the regimental officers – Yell and Roane – during the action of February 23.

It is a sad thing [Pike said] that brave men, for they were brave, should be… destroyed for want of discipline. In the first place, the companies of our Regiment engaged there, had been hardly drilled at all, except what little the company officers had done. The Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel had never drilled them since they left San Antonio. Their order once broken could not be restored, and a retreat was bound to be a rout… Had they… possessed that mobility and facility of changing front which only discipline could give, they could not have been routed as they were. Poor Yell! He atoned for his error with his life; but other brave men died with him, who were not in fault… .

It must not be understood that I intend to accuse any, much less officers, of a lack of bravery – on the contrary, the universal testimony is that the officers behaved with great gallantry – but the astonishing confusion for want of discipline, utterly broke up, dispersed and disorganized their commands, so that they could not be collected together. Many of the men behaved heroically, but their individual courage and conduct could not restore confidence or order to the mass… [49]

Soon after writing this letter Pike went to Chihuahua. When he returned to Saltillo on May 22, he was confronted by certain members of the Arkansas regiment with a complaint that he had accused their corps of cowardice in face of the enemy. Pike immediately requested General Wool to appoint a court of inquiry to investigate the false report, which he felt had been spread among the men by the regimental officers, and which, Pike told the general, if not looked into would result in “great difficulty and perhaps loss of life.” [50]

The court assembled on May 24 at General Wool’s Buena Vista headquarters. Colonel Roane, who had succeeded the deceased Yell, and Captains Hunter, Inglish, Desha, Dilliard, and Pike were summoned for examination. In a statement before the court Pike reiterated that he had never “accused the regiment of cowardice,” but he openly declared that the regiment had been “badly managed, owing to want of discipline, and lack of military skill in the commander, which exposed it to great disadvantage.” Roane and his subordinate officers, perhaps apprehensive that a full scale investigation of the behavior of the Arkansas cavalry would uncover unpleasant truths, declared themselves satisfied with Pike’s statements and announced to the court that the dispute had been “amicably adjusted.” [51]

When Pike returned to Little Rock in July, he discovered – evidently what had been concealed at the hearing on May 24 — that both Colonel Roane and Captain Edward Hunter had asserted in letters to the Banner not only that his squadron had been separated from the regiment on February 22-23, but also that it had taken no part in the battle on either of those days, being, as Hunter declared, “without the range of gun-shot.” [52] Pike apparently became so vexed at this deception that he took up the matter with Roane personally.

Most writers have attempted to lay the principal blame for the duel that followed upon Pike, whose criticism of the Arkansas regiment, according to these accounts, grew out of the fact that he was brooding over the defeat that Colonel Yell handed him in the regimental election the year before. [53] Surely no one can deny that bad political feelings prompted both Pike’s and Roane’s statements. The records indicate, however, that Pike’s assertions are supportable by evidence while Roane’s statement that Pike’s squadron was not at the battleground on February 23 was a wilful lie. It may be that Roane intended to embroil Pike in an editorial dispute and thus allow the truth of Pike’s case to be confused and destroyed in the eyes of the anti-Whig Arkansas public. But whatever Roane’s intention, his plan was disputed by Pike’s challenge.

Pike and Roane met on July 29, 1847, on a sandbar in the Arkansas River opposite Fort Smith, in the Cherokee Nation. Only a few spectators were present. [54] Both men displayed admirable courage. At the “call” they stepped forward ten paces, and a pair of dueling pistols was loaded and placed in their hands. Both fired at the word, but neither was hit. The second round proved no more damaging than the first. [55] Fortunately, at this point, while the seconds were arranging for a third fire, Pike’s and Roane’s surgeons intervened and stopped the combat, apparently threatening to leave the principals helpless on the field if they chose to fire again. [56] This unorthodox interruption proved effective. The duel was stopped ; Pike and Roane shook hands and agreed never to refer to the difficulty again. [57] Thus it was, said Rector, that the of fair which he had “calculated” to end with a funeral resulted in a “banquet.” [58] Both men returned unharmed to their anxious families and friends in Little Rock.

1) W. L. Mares, Secretary of War, to Thomas S. Drew, Governor of Arkansas, War Department, Washington. D. C., May 15, 1846, in Little Rock, Arkansas Gazette, June 1, 1846. Hereafter cited Gazette.
2) Gazette, June 1, 1846.
3) Albert Pike, The Evil and the Remedy (Little Rock, 1844), 183; Albert Pike to Jessie Turner, Washington, [Arkansas], July 13, [18146, Jessie Turner Papers, Duke University Archives. Microfilm copy in possession of author. Pike requests Turner to assume responsibility for his cases during his absence and informs Turner that “Circumstances forced me to this expedition…”
4) Albert Pike, “To the Little Rock Guards,” May 29, 1846,” in Gazette, June 1, 1846.
5) Gazette, June 8, 1846.
6) Ibid.; Pike to Turner, July 13, 1846, Turner Papers.
7) Ibid., June 15, 22, 1846.
8) Ibid., June 22, July 13, 1846.
9) Pike had severely disciplined, thereby acquiring the dislike of, several of his men who had gone home without his leave on July 4. See G. B. B. “To the Editor,” Washington, Arkansas, July 7, 1846, in Gazette, July 13 1846.
10) Josiah Gregg, the famed author of Commerce of the Prairies, who accompanied the Arkansas volunteers as a sort of “interpreter-scout,” considered Colonel Yell “a very clever, pleasant, sociable fellow, but decidedly out of his element” as a military leader. Gregg thought Pike was the “best disciplinarian and drill officer in the corps . . . and decidedly ‘number one’ in point of talent and acquirements;” but he considered Pike, in despite of his superior ability, “too stiff and aristocratic in his manner to be popular … [and doubted] if he could be elected by a general vote to any office in the regiment.” Maurice Garland Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Josiah Gregg (2 vols., Norman, Oklahoma, 1941), I, 218-219.
11) Gazette, July 13, 1846; see; also in ibid. a copy of a petition of Pike’s men in which they requested him not to participate in the regimental election but to remain in command of their company.
12) Ibid., July 20, 27, 1846.
13) Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, I, 208; Senate Executive Document 32, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 558, p. 5; George Lockhart Rives, The United States and Mexico, 1821.1848 (2 vols., New York, 1913), II, 195-219
14) Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, I, 201, pp. 206-217.
15) Solon Borland to Major William Field, Camp Yell, San Antonio, Texas, September 284 1464, in Little Rock Arkansas Banner, November 11, 1846; “Autobiography of Albert Pike,” New Age Magazine, XXXVIII (March, 1930), 142, hereafter cited “Autobiography.” Also hereafter Little Rock Arkansas Banner cited Banner.
16) “Autobiography” New Age Magazine, XXXVIII, 142.
17) Borland to Field, September 28, 1846, in Banner, November 11, 1846.
18) Augustus Frederick Ehinger, Manuscript Diary of his travels from Illinois to Mexico… as a member of Comp. H., Second Regiment Illinois Volunteers, during the Mexican War, [June 15, 1846 - June 28, 1847], Dec. 16th, [1846]. Translated from the German script owned by Colonel Charles F. Ward, Roswell, New Mexico. Hereafter cited Ehinger Diary. Also in Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, 1, 261, quoting the unpublished diary of Ehinger.
19) [Albert Pike] to “L.”, Patos, Mexico, December 31, 1846, in Gazette, February 6, 1847.
20) An extract from a letter of a member of Pike’s company written on September 3, 1846, states that “we have been drilling on the road while other companies have been doing nothing.” Gazette, October 14, 1846.
21) Borland to Major Fields, September 28, 1846, in Banner, November 11, 1846.
22) This division of the Arkansas horse was perhaps a result of a quarrel between Major Borland and Colonel Yell. See Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters: of Gregg, I, 218-219.
23) Sen. Ex. Doc. 32, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 558, p. 18.
24) “Letter From Presidio,” October 12, 1846, in Banner, November, 25, 1846.
25) John Preston, “To a Friend,” Camp near Presidio, Mexico, October 14, 1846 in Gazette, December 5, 1846; Sen. Ex. Doc. 32, 31st Cong., 1st. Sess., Serial No. 558, pp. 18-21; “Autobiography,” New Age Magazine, XXXVIII, 142,
26) Sen. Ex. Doc. 32, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 558, p. 22; “Autobiography,” New Age Magazine, XXXVIII, 142.
27) Sen. Ex. Doc. 32, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 558, p. 28.
28) [Pike] to “L.”, December 31, 1846, in Gazette, February 6, 1847.
29) Albert Pike, “To a Friend in Little Rock,” Las Palomas, Mexico, February 14, 1847, in Banner, March 31, 1847.
30) H. R. Ex. Doc. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 520, pp. 1106-1109, 1112-1113, 1183-1184. “It is reported,” said General Wool, “they were surprised early in the morning, while asleep, with no pickets or’ sentinels to guard against surprise.” Ibid., 1107.
31) Danley himself had been captured with Borland on January 22.
32) Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, II, 36-37, 39-40.
33) Ehringer Diary, February 11, 13, 1847; ibid., II, 40; H. R. Ex. Doc. 60, 30th Cong., 1st. Sess., Serial No. 520, p. 1138; W. S. Henry. Campaign Sketches of the War With Mexico (New York, 1847), 308-309; for a quarrel that developed between Pike and Edward Hunter over this affair see Banner, March 31, 1847, and Gazette, July 22, 27, 1847.
34) [Pike], “Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847-
35) James Henry Carleton, Battle of Buena Vista (New York, 1848), 36-37, 43-45; Henry, Campaign Sketches, 313; [Pike], “Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847.
36) Carleton, The Battle of Buena Vista, 66-67.
37) Ehinger Diary, February 11, 13, 1847.
38) Ibid., March 7, 1847. Ehinger wrote on April 7, 1847, that “Companies B and G, Arkansas Volunteers who behaved so shamefully at Agua Nueva, and who were so cowardly during the Battle of Buena Vista, were today sent to the mouth of the Rio Grande for punishment.” Ibid.
39) Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, II, 48.
40) [Pike], “Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847.
41) Henry, Campaign Sketches, 393; Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, 11, 48-49; Carleton, Battle of Buena Vista, 70-72.
42) Henry, Campaign Sketches, 316-317; Carleton, Battle of Buena Vista, 89.94; Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, II, 49-51.
43) [Pike], “Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847; Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, II, 49.
44) Ibid.; Henry, Campaign Sketches, 316-317; Carleton, Battle of Buena Vista, 89-94. Cf. Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Gregg, II, 49, for a view hostile to that of Pike and others.
45) Carleton, Battle of Buena Vista, 94-126; Henry, Campaign Sketches, 315-316, 319-321; Senate Executive Document I. 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 503, pp. 97-210, containing General Taylor’s report of the battle, with the subreports from his officers; Pike, “Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847.
46) J. T. S. [James T. Stevenson) to his father, Arispi’s Mills, Mexico, April 17, 1847, in Gazette, May 15, 1847; H. R. Ex. Doc. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 520, pp. 1127-1129, 1136; Futon, ed.. Diary & Letters of Gregg, 11, 79, 89, 95-96, 98-100; Robert Seph Henry, The Story of the Mexican War (New York, 1950), 236,237.
47) H. R. Ex. Doc. 60, 30th Cong., lst Sess., Serial No. 520, p. 1175. The Arkansas regiment was discharged at Carmago, Mexico, a few days later. Ibid.
48) William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas (Little Rock, 1895), 276; in Banner, July 12, 1847.
49) [Pike], Buena Vista Letter,” March 8, 1847, in Gazette, April 24, 1847.
50) Albert Pike to Brigadier Wool, Camp at Arispi’s Mills, May 23, 1847, in Gazette, July 22, 1847.
51) See Gazette, July 22, 1847, for the record of this court inquiry; the opinion of the court was that the difficulty “grew out of a misunderstanding, and that neither party are [sic] at all to blame in the matter.” Ibid.
52) See extracts from a letter from Roane, Camp Taylor, Mexico, February 27. 1847, in Banner, April 21, 1847; Edward Hunter, “To the People of Arkansas,” in Banner, July 19 1847, also in Clarksville Texas Northern Standard, July 17, 1847.
53) John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas (Chapel Hill, 1947), 121.122; Pope, Early Days in Arkansas, 281, asserts that Roane challenged Pike after Pike had severely criticized the conduct of the Arkansas regiment in the columns of the Gazette. For evidence that Pike was the challenger see “The Recent Duel,” in Banner, August 5, 1847. Fred W. Allsopp, Albert Pike (Little Rock, 1928), leans toward the Pope version, and is puzzled upon discovering that Doctor James Dibrell, Pike’s surgeon at the affair, said Pike was the challenger.
54) Pike was accompanied by Luther Chase and John Drennen of Van Buren, as seconds, Doctor James A. Dibrell of Van Buren, acting as surgeon, and William H. Causins, Pat Farraley, and Doctor R. Thurston, present as friends. Henry M. Rector and Robert W. Johnson of Little Rock acted as seconds for Roane, while Doctor Phillip Burton of Little Rock, served as his surgeon.
55) John Hallum, Biographical and Pictorial History of Arkansas (1 vol., NY, 1887), I, 229-230.
56) See Doctor Dibrell’s account in the Gazette, April 2, 1893, quoted in Pope, Early Days in Arkansas, 282.283. For additional evidence that Burton and Dibrell were responsible for the settlement, see “The Recent Duel,” in Banner, August 9, 1847.
57) “The Recent Duel,” in Banner, August 9, 1847; “Affair of Honor,” in Gazette, August 5, 1847, quoting Van Buren, Arkansas Intelligencer, n.d.; see also Northern Standard, August 21, 1847.
58) H. M. Rector to John Hallum, Little Rock, Arkansas, April 16, 1887, in Hallum, History of Arkansas, I, 230.